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Professor Michael Sharpe highlights medicine's 'blind spot' in dealing with symptoms that are not just expressions of disease. These include the many cancer patients who also suffer from depression, the one third of medical outpatients whose symptoms are not to be explained by disease, and patients with controversial syndromes such as chronic fatigue syndrome or ME. He says this 'blind spot' is a result of relegating aspects of medicine not associated with diagnosing and treating disease to the pre-scientific 'art of medicine', or even to complementary and alternative medicine.

He says: "If we are to treat patients' symptoms more effectively, we need to expand the scope of scientific medicine to investigate a wider range of causes and treatments. That is, we need a science of what was previously thought to be the 'art' of medicine, In order to do this, we must accept the subjective experience of the patient as real and measurable and consider psychological as well as biological aspects of medical treatment as important. Even the performing of medical tests and the giving of a diagnosis are psychological interventions, the effect of which can and should be studied scientifically."

Professor Sharpe adds: " There are a number of examples of current scientific research aimed at treating patients' symptoms by addressing psychological aspects of medical care. These include exploration of the therapeutic impact of investigation and diagnosis in patients whose symptoms are disproportionate to disease; problem solving therapy delivered by cancer nurses to help patients with cancer to overcome their depression, and different forms of activity management programmes to help patients manage chronic fati
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Contact: Linda Menzies
Linda.Menzies@ed.ac.uk
44-131-650-6382
University of Edinburgh
12-May-2005